Chapstick sticks it to women

Last week, my blog Reel Girl featured a guest post by Melissa Spiers regarding a sexist advertisement for Chapstick. Sexist advertisements are so common, why even bother to comment on another one, right? Well, apparently Chapstick feels we have no right to comment on it, even when they invite us to “BE HEARD” in their ad copy. All attempts at protesting their use of a bent-over woman’s ass to sell their “hide and seek with Chapstick” message were immediately removed from Chapstick’s Facebook page. You would think this would be outrageous enough, and yet it gets much more interesting: men who want to BE HEARD on the site making comments like “after looking at this pic i know right where i wanna hide my chapstick” do not get censored by the company.

For people who are not allowed on Chapstick’s FB page but want to “be heard” by the company and other consumers, we created “Butt seriously, Chapstick.” New posts include: “Chapstick is continuing to actively delete comments from their Facebook page from those of us speaking out against their ass-tastic advertising campaign that objectifies a woman looking for her lost tube. They are allowing sexual and rude comments from men to remain. I have used Chapstick for 23 years, and that ended immediately on Friday. I am taking my dollars elsewhere.”

Commenters kicked off Chapstick’s FB page have posted screen shots of their comments and critiques before Chapstick deleted them, which usually happened in less than 4 minutes. Is this someone’s full time job?

Chapstick should remember what we tell our children about living in a digital age: comments can be deleted, but someone somewhere will still have a record of it. So try your best to live honorably, live honestly, and don’t be stupid. Hopefully, Chapstick will get it in the end.

Update: Sometime since the “Butt, seriously” FB page went up, it looks like Chapstick has taken down some sexist posts. There are practically no comments up at all from Saturday 11AM – Sunday 2PM when many “Butt seriously” commenters were posting.